New Illini Bluffs superintendent Roger Alvey reconnects with his hometown

Scott Hilyard of the Journal Star

Saturday

May 31, 2014 at 5:00 PM

GLASFORD — Roger Alvey’s connection to the Illini Bluffs School District actually predates the formation of the Illini Bluffs School District in 1969 and his own birth by about 17 years.

His father, James Alvey, was the principal of Timber Township High School and then Illini Bluffs High School when the district was remade in 1969. He retired in 1988 after 30 years. The high school library is named for his mother, Rose Alvey, who founded and operated a small community library in Glasford for decades.

Roger Alvey, now 45, grew up in Glasford and attended Illini Bluffs schools, graduating from the high school in 1987. Out of college, he returned home after a teaching job in Bushnell and taught science and coached girls basketball in the district for three years. At age 28, he was named principal of the Illini Bluffs Middle School. He left the district in 2001 to pursue a career in school administration.

So, why are we telling you all of this?

Because he’s back.

This week Alvey reconnected with his hometown school district in a big way; Wednesday was his first day as the new superintendent of Illini Bluffs School District 327, the place where his roots are sunk deep. He started it with an unscheduled practice lockdown.

“First hour, first day,” Alvey said of the timing of the lockdown, intended to kickstart security practices under his new administrative rule. “Figured we’d get started with a bang.”

Alvey fills the job vacancy created by the resignation of superintendent Sam Light earlier this year. Light accepted the superintendent’s position in Sherrard Community Unit School District 200.

His new position creates a lot of unusual relationships for a superintendent. He and his wife Stephanie have four children in the district, which means a lot of parents of students in the district now were his friends and classmates growing up in Glasford. There are a few teachers who taught him in high school who are still teaching today, and a few more who were his colleagues when he was a teacher in the middle school and who worked for him when he was principal.

And then this: the current school board president, Ryan Alwood, was a student in Alvey’s horticulture class in middle school.

“I remember him as a very engaged teacher, very passionate about helping kids learn,” said Ryan Alwood, the president of the Illini Bluffs school board. “I kid him now that I still don’t have a green thumb, but that I don’t hold it against him.”

Now Alvey serves at the pleasure of the school board his former student heads.

“We were very fortunate to be in a position to be able to bring Roger back home,” Alwood said.

Alvey hopes to raise the profile and improve the image of the Illini Bluffs school district that has a history of unrest and distrust between teachers and the administration. An eight-day strike in 2010 was the sixth strike since the district formed in 1969. The situation appears to be improving; a mostly new school board approved new contracts for teachers and staff last year following negotiations that showed none of the rancor of the past.

“We’re going to work to get beyond the strikes,” Alvey said. “Part of my goal is to get the image of Illini Bluffs changed to a more positive light.”

He said there’s no reason the district shouldn’t be perceived as anything but desirable.

“Illini Bluffs should be at the top of the list. We need Realtors to steer homebuyers here. We’ve got solid academics, safe schools, affordable housing, beautiful Lake Camelot, Banner Marsh recreation area, industry, jobs,” Alvey said. “When (retired Brimfield superintendent) Dennis McNamara took the interim (superintendent job) after Sam (Light) left, he told me, ‘You’ve got a great school district here. People just don’t know about it.’ We need to change that.”

Last week Alvey led a visitor on a tour starting from his office inside the elementary school section of the single building complex that houses all three district schools. Up the steps to the Rose Alvey Library, down some hallways, through the gymnasium, he walked with a confident and purposeful stride that belied the fact that it was the first day on the job.

“There I am,” Alvey said after stopping and poking an index finger toward a photograph on the top shelf of the high school’s trophy case in the cafeteria, high enough for almost no one to be easily able to see. Standing on a chair would have helped. “Second from the right.”

The photograph was of the 1987 track team. Alvey participated in the discus, shot put and triple jump. In the picture, he’s angled toward the camera and crowded in next to his Illini Bluffs singlet-wearing teammates, a slight cast of sulky teen-ager seriousness on his face.

“Man I was skinny,” he said. “I was 6-4, 176 back then. Now? 6-4, 265.”

He patted his non-teen-ager stomach with both hands.

“Big difference,” he said, and laughed.

Bodies change as people age. People change, too, but mostly they stay about the same. Alvey seemed to occupy a comfortable place inside the building that exhibited framed displays of photos of graduating seniors reaching back to the Timber Township years. Those displays included his graduating class of 1987, and the graduating classes of the 30 that his father James presided over.

So are you happy to be back home, Alvey was asked.

“I’m ecstatic to be back home,” he said.

Scott Hilyard can be reached at 686-3244 or by email at shilyard@pjstar.com. Follow @scotthilyard on Twitter.

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